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'Ås' is a municipality in the county of Akershus, Norway.
Ås was established as a municipality January 1, 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt).
The municipality covers 103 km², and has 14,472 inhabitants as of January 1, 2005. The center of Ås has 7976 inhabitants [1]. Ås is best known for the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB, formerly Agricultural University of Norway, NLH) and the Tusenfryd amusement park, though lesser recognised attractions as the DaVinci bridge are – unfortunately – often well kept secrets for tourists and unfamiliars. Ås has also raised widely known people as Vibeke Løkkeberg, Solveig Kringlebotn, Christian Magnus Falsen, Simen Agdestein and Knut Hjeltnes, among many others. Through Ås runs both European route E6 and European route E18 (the two largest highways of Norway), and many of the inhabitants commute to Oslo, the capital of Norway.
The most important source of income is agriculture. Ås is the largest agricultural municipal of Akershus, providing the whole region with corn and vegetables, plus dairy products. 80% of the land is cultivated, but that doesn’t prevent Ås from also being one of the leading municipals in Norway within technology, industry and a lot of other new developments in science and engineering.

Contents

The name

Coat-of-arms

References

The name

The municipality (originally the parish) is named after the old farm Ås (Norse ''Áss''), since the first church was built there. The name is identical with the word ''áss'' m 'mountain ridge'.
Until 1921 the name was written "Aas".

Coat-of-arms

The coat-of-arms is from modern times (1982). The rhombus is meant to represent a Nøstvet ax (a type of stone ax from the Old Stone Age, found in the municipality). And the number of three is meant to represent the three parishes of the municipality: Ås, Kroer and Nordby.

A recreation in a smaller scale of a 240 m span bridge that Leonardo da Vinci proposed in 1502 for the crossing of the Bosphorus is located in the municipality. It was created by Norwegian painter and artist Vebjørn Sand as part of his Da Vinci project. The bridge serves as a pedestrian crossing over European route E18.

References